DUBAI, Jan 29 (AFP) - The group of Al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility Saturday for a suicide attack at an Iraqi polling station and vowed to spill more blood on election day, according to a statement posted on an Islamist website.
"A lion from the martyrdom-seeking brigade of the Al-Qaeda Group of Jihad in the Land of Two Rivers carried out an attack against the Americans and their agents in the Khanaqin region," said the statement, whose authenticity could not be verified.
"This is only (a small) part of what our virtuous sheikh Abu Musab al-Zarqawi promised," the statement said.
"We warn for the last time that tomorrow will be a bloody day for the Jews, the Christians, their agents, and anyone who agrees to play the American-Allawi game," added the statement in a reference to Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
Iraqi police and the US military said that a suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt walked up to an Iraqi polling station in Khanaqin, a town near the border with Iran, and set off a blast that killed eight people, including a child and three soldiers.
The attack was one of a series by insurgents in which at least 18 people were killed on the eve of Iraq's US-backed election despite massive security measures across the country.
An official from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in the Kurdish town of Suleimaniyah said the attacker had been identified as a Sudanese member of Zarqawi's network.
"It was a Sudanese member of Al-Qaeda," Molla Bakhtiar, a member of the party's political bureau, told reporters.
Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born fugitive with a 25-million-dollar US price on his head, has threatened to attack anyone involved in Sunday's polls.
01/29/2005 17:20 GMT - AFP